Maybe he should have told Not-Thanos he was illiterate.
En propped his head on his hands and sighed, squinting at the holographic screens around him and resisting the urge to slam his forehead into the desk until he was unconscious. Gods and demons above, this was the worst damn thing he'd ever had to do in his entire life. Like recovering from a hangover, but in reverse.
And the silence of Not-Thanos's ship pressed on his ears, every tiny clank or hiss echoing like a gunshot in his small room, making his heart lurch uncomfortably. He'd seen what Not-Thanos had done to Taneleer. He had every right to feel a little jumpy.
En squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes, sadly, the holograms were still there. "I hate this," he muttered, and finally gave in and put his head on his desk.
Yep. Should've said he was illiterate. Then he wouldn't have to read all this… garbage.
Being a general was not all it was cracked up to be. For one, he actually had to do work. Which was exhausting. He had a list of planets and races that were either already in the thrall of Thanos, used to be, or needed to be, but En had no idea how to narrow them down. The information would be oh, so interesting if he didn't have to do any actual work with it.
He hadn't been off Sakaar for two billion years, and the universe had changed so much. There were new stars, new galaxies; someone had chopped off a Celestial's head - now that was someone En would want to meet - and converted it into a black market headquarters; and Dormammu, that crusty bastard, had finally hauled himself out of his fuckforsaken Dark Dimension to eat Terra, but had gotten scared off and hadn't been detected since. Good riddance.
All this information was very well and good, but - but it was so boring. He hated having to analyze these lists of meaningless numbers, tallying them up and doing research on things he didn't even give a shit about. En leaned back in his chair, nearly dragged his hands down his face, and stopped so he wouldn't smear his makeup. He'd never run anything more complicated than a blender in his whole life, let alone an entire empire's army. En had always delegated these things to the Sakaarans. He was never one for numbers...
Wait.
En straightened in his chair, staring straight ahead. "Hmm," he grunted, lacing his fingers beneath his chin and thinking.
Delegation. Not-Thanos was delegating. If what he had heard was true, the old Thanos usually took the initiative, coordinated the attacks and gave the orders like the general he was. But this Not-Thanos was taking a backseat. He was giving all the jobs to people more qualified than him, so he could sit back and watch. Enjoy the fruits of their labors.
Nobody knew that kind of delegation better than En Dwi Gast.
So maybe he had a chance, after all - because if Not-Thanos was so inept and off-balance in this new universe that he was giving them all the dirty work, he might be so distracted that he wouldn't see a rebellion under his very nose.
En rubbed his chest, over the spot where the Power Primordial had surged from his body into Not-Thanos's hand.
"War is a game, is it not?"
"War's a game, huh?" En muttered. He sniffed haughtily and scooted his chair back, giving the holograms one last glance. Well, survival could be a game, too. This was a game of tag. Right now, Thanos was It and En was the one running like hell. But there wasn't any fun in just running away. Why else were obstacle courses so popular? People loved a challenge - En loved a challenge.
But there was still so much that En didn't know. He was just as off-balance as Not-Thanos. All he needed was more information - something beyond the bland numbers and cold data. There was only one person who could help him there.
Well - two. He stood and left for what passed for the Sanctuary II's library. Neither of them were his favorites, but he would take what he could get.
On his way out, En rubbed his chest again, and tried not to think of how the shadows grew deeper and darker as he left his room. A foul smell drifted through every part of the ship, reeking of death and decay; the air was hollow and musty in his lungs. His footsteps echoed. En would kill to get some real lights in here - bright lights, maybe some lava lamps and a disco ball - but even the thought of seeing the neon lights blinking on the Sanctuary II's rusty interior made his stomach turn. Like sprinkling glitter on a rotting corpse. Pointless.
The hallway leading to Kamo's and Seginn's shared workspace was dark, but he could hear voices echoing. "There is simply no way," Kamo was roaring, "that we can observe that!" En cringed just hearing his voice. Nails on chalkboard. Hoo boy, he was in for a rough time.
Seginn said, quiet and snippy, "You cannot observe that. I, however, can."
"Perhaps you can, but it's pointless!"
En took a deep breath, bid farewell to his ears (because if Seginn and Kamo were getting in a fight his ears would probably start to bleed), and pushed open the door.
In the library, Kamo was hunched over a large table, jabbing his finger at an array of holograms hovering over a desk. Seginn stood there with his hands folded complacently, studying the maps of the galaxies without even looking at Kamo. "To you, perhaps it is," he said, the holographic stars flickering over his face.
Kamo scowled and waved a hand, dismissing the holograms. Seginn gave him a sharp look and called them back up. They glared at each other for a few moments, during which En wanted nothing more than to smash his head into the table. "Yes," Kamo said, through gritted teeth. His eyes were shrouded by his completely-aesthetic-and-unnecessary blindfold, but En had no doubt that they were burning with fury. "It is."
"Hm. Unfortunate." Seginn returned to his holograms and zoomed in on a couple of stars. "Ah, En - how kind of you to join us."
En jumped, startled at being addressed directly. "Yeah, uh. Hi," he said, wiggling his fingers in greeting. "Just thought I'd pop in -"
"What do you want?" Seginn said frostily.
Well, wasn't that just rude. En gave him a casual shrug and said, "Well, y'know, just looking for a thing. Stuff. Not important - what are you two up to?"
"Trying to convince him that he's wrong," the other two said simultaneously.
Ignoring Seginn's venomous glare, Kamo gripped his staff tighter and said, "Seginn here wishes to scan the stars for traces of the stones. I have a more comprehensive plan -"
"That's great," En said. "I, uh, I don't really care, Kamo, full offense meant - I actually have a question -"
"My plan," Kamo said over him, and En resisted the urge to tear his own eyeballs out, "actually has scientific merit." Seginn muttered something derogatory under his breath and turned away, deliberately striding to the other side of the hologram table. En glared at his back. When Kamo started talking again, he blinked and summoned a tensely polite smile. Coward.
"According to my research," Kamo said, drumming his fingers in an extremely annoying rhythm on his staff, "the Stones have a tendency to affect their environment around them. Take Morag, for example - its residents, before they were wiped out, tried to use the Power Stone to hold their shattered planet together. After their civilization was destroyed, the Power Stone remained, the Orb channeling its power into the earth and keeping it melded. The very fabric of reality is warped around Morag. The Stones -"
En suppressed a yawn.
"I saw that."
"No you didn't. Please, continue," En said hastily.
Kamo's nose wrinkled. "Hmph. Anyway," he sniffed, "the Stones may have gone to places that they frequented for long periods of time, because space itself is altered in the regions they occupy. It's been documented."
"Has it, really," Seginn said in a monotone.
"It has, if you were listening to me while I told you earlier," Kamo snapped. "1.8 billion years after the birth of the universe, a race found the Reality Stone on a distant planet. They overused it; its container, which was fundamentally unstable, exploded in a matter very similar to the Infinity Gauntlet, and the Stone returned to the planet it had come from."
"Uh huh," En said blandly.
"It is possible that the Stones may have returned to places they have been used frequently."
"Uh huh."
"Perhaps a conscious choice, or not -"
"Yep."
"- it's also documented that some of the Stones have something resembling an artificial intelligence -"
"Yeah."
"- a modicum of choice may have been involved -"
Okay, that was it. En was fully aware that he had the attention span of a half-dead goldfish, and this was the least interesting thing he had ever heard come out of Kamo's mouth. "Okay, okay, I'm gonna stop you right there," he said loudly; Kamo froze, every line of his face radiating furious disapproval. "Fascinating. Really, really fascinating. But that's not why I'm here - I, I, I need answers, okay. I need to know what I'm supposed to do in this mess -"
"Somehow, you're the commander of Thanos's armies," Kamo muttered. "That's a pretty obvious indicator of what you should do."
"Actually, no it's not -"
"En."
Seginn swiveled and gave him a baleful, vaguely disappointed look. "You hardly have to do any work," he said. "Frankly, I'm rather jealous of you. Taneleer, Maht and Tryco are doing everything difficult - we just give them orders. You don't have to do anything hard."
"Uhhhh, yes, I do," En said slowly. "I have to raise a universe-conquering army from a bunch of scraps, that sounds pretty damn hard to me -"
Seginn shrugged and idly laced his fingers together. "You'll figure it out," he said, managing to sound both reassuring and snide at the same time. Pompous ass. En scowled at him and very, very deliberately turned his back on him. Oh, he'd always hated that smug bastard with a fiery passion. Seginn was almost older than the stars themselves; back in his day, they must not have known what humor was. Even the Nameless One had a sense of humor, but Seginn Gallio? A stick up his ass the size of the Andromeda Galaxy. Asshole.
At least Kamo had the decency to snark back at him. "So," En said to him, giving him a smile so fake it hurt his cheeks. "Theories. Have at thee. Hit me up."
"Afraid not, En," Kamo said gruffly.
"Aw, come on -"
"No, no, En, this isn't any of your business." Kamo took a deep breath and exhaled, his blindfolded gaze darting towards Seginn. "The stones are our duty to find, not yours," he said quietly. "Your job is much more important. You have to keep the whole damn universe from flying apart. Find allies, identify enemies, convert who you can't and kill who you can't."
His face twisted in a strange way, different from his usual sourness. En narrowed his eyes. "The galaxy has a complex political structure. If we must... convert it to Thanos's cause, then you will have to take advantage of it."
"Yeah, and what's that?"
Kamo blinked. "Pardon?"
"What," En said, "is Thanos's cause?"
Kamo tilted his head slightly. Behind that not-blindfold, he was no-doubt looking skeptically down his nose, but En didn't care. "Here's the thing, Kams. Thanos hasn't told me anything about what I'm supposed to do, alright? Alright? You know what he's been doing instead?"
"Enlighten me," Kamo muttered.
"He's locked himself in that creepy throne room in the middle of the ship," he said. "He's looking at old databases, video recordings, staring at star maps as if he's never seen them before. It's as if..."
En paused; the words were lined up on his tongue, waiting to be spoken, but he almost couldn't bring himself to speak. They felt… wrong. Impossible.
"What?"
En swallowed. "It's as if he's seeing the world for the first time," he said softly. "Through new eyes." He lifted his gaze and nearly met Kamo's, but failed. The blindfold and all. "Using the gauntlet must have changed him - but how much?" He expected his cousin to snap off a snarky reply - maybe about the Titan's charred body, or his insane policies, or something.
But Kamo said nothing; his mouth merely twisted into a sour, thoughtful line, and he glanced across the room. Seginn was puttering around the holographic table, scribbling down figures and muttering to himself.
"That's right," Kamo said quietly.
His blindfolded gaze slid back to him, the calculating stare of a hunting falcon, and En's skin crawled. "You have been out of the loop for an unfortunate amount of time, have you."
It was a statement, not a question. En answered it anyway. "Yeah, well," he said, "I had it good on Sakaar. A nice getaway, you know?"
"A two-billion-year-long getaway," Kamo said frostily. "You've missed a lot, cousin. Entire star systems have been wiped out since you left for Sakaar. Empires have fallen, risen and fallen yet again. Wars have been fought that reshaped the stars themselves. New races have risen to prominence and begun to make their mark on the cosmos. Even Terra is taking its place among the stars."
En scoffed. "Terra? The Celestials' old pet project?"
"Indeed."
"Last I heard, it was overrun with a bunch of scrawny lizards - oh. Oh, no. Don't tell me they have sentient lizards, that's just weird -"
"En."
"What?"
"Will you take this seriously for five seconds?" Kamo snapped, his lips thin with anger. En sighed. "The Terrans had two of the Infinity Stones. And used them."
What. "No, they didn't," En said.
"Yes, they did."
"No, they didn't - that's not possible," En insisted. "That's, that's, no."
"Yes," said Kamo. "They had containers that let them use their powers. Thanos went to their planet to get the Stones -"
"Why?"
Kamo took a deep breath and slowly reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Just - shut up," he hissed. "For five. Bloody. Seconds. Are you at least capable of that much, you ridiculous drunk?"
"Hey, don't look at me, I'm just curious," En said defensively.
"Then be curious a little bit quieter, I'm trying to explain why you should be afraid for your life," Kamo said, jabbing En in the chest with one slender finger. Something cold sank into the pit of his stomach; the aged lines of Kamo's face were twisted with fear.
"At first, Thanos sought to wipe out half of all life in the universe," Kamo whispered. "For the sake of balance. He would land on planets, slaughter half its people, and leave to do the same to another. So that resources would be shared more evenly."
"Well, that's stupid," En scoffed.
Kamo whacked him in the chest and glanced around. "Not so loud," he said sharply. His gaze returned to En. "But you're right," he whispered. "It was foolishness. It is foolishness. But that's not the problem. The problem is that Thanos is supposed to stop."
"What do you mean?"
"He achieved his purpose," Kamo said, his mouth twisting. "He once said to his children, on the planet Zen-Whoberi, that when he was done he would look out over the grateful universe, when his work was done, and take a well-deserved rest." En didn't bother asking how he knew that; Kamo knew everything. That was just the way it was.
Kamo took one hand off his staff and gestured at the room around them - at the shadows clinging to the walls, the tang of mold and blood in the air. In the gloom of the makeshift library, his face was hollow as a skull. "This is not rest," he said, his hand shaking. "This is madness. He does not seek to change the universe - he seeks to destroy it. He seeks to dominate all life."
"That's new?"
"As new as the fire burning in his eyes and along his limbs, and the darkness in his soul."
Kamo leaned in, so close that En could see the woven threads of his blindfold. "You felt that, didn't you?" he said softly. "That fierce malevolence; the danger, the dark. And you saw something, too, when you touched that glove."
En swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "Maybe," he croaked. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't."
"What did you see?"
En did not respond.
"En Dwi Gast, what did you see?"
"An eye," En whispered. "A great eye, formed of flame and shadow. It looked right into my soul, and - and -"
Before him, Kamo's pale skin had gone even paler. "Uh. Kamo," En said. "Do you, uh. Do you know what it might be?"
Kamo said nothing, merely stared at him with a blank face. "I have theories," he said. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "None of them good. This may have roots in the War of the Ring three millennia ago - or the legends of the Celestial War, or - or even further back, beyond the beginning of our universe." His hand rubbed circles into his chest, a faint echo of pain on his face. "It may be," he whispered. "The Ring… If the Asgardians…"
"Kamo?"
"That is a war I turned my back on for a reason," the other Elder muttered. "Asgard's treachery - bold, for such a young race… This is not the time or place to speak of this, but know this much, cousin - we are in the thrall of something much more powerful than us. Thanos is no mere Titan now."
"And where does that leave us?"
Kamo took a deep breath, and exhaled. "I don't know," he forced out, and the words clearly pained him to say.
They looked at each other in the silence for a while longer. In the background, Seginn puttered around and adjusted the holographic maps, scribbling down figures. For the first time, En felt as though he'd seriously underestimated things; if Thanos, or whatever was living in his nasty purple body, was as bad as Kamo let on, what kind of a fucking chance did he stand? This was ridiculous. This was - this was -
"En."
Kamo's voice was harsh, ponderous. "If anything," he said quietly, "it leaves us exactly where we are now. In his thrall. At his will. We cannot hope for freedom from this."
En's chest felt crushed. "Are you serious?" he breathed. "Are you - are you fucking serious?"
"Yes," Kamo said stonily. "We have no choice but to follow his will. Use our skills to do what we can."
En's mouth fell open, and he was about to say some very rude things - but there was a strange tilt to Kamo's head, a meaningful set to his eyebrows. En's eyes narrowed. "Right," he said slowly, watching Kamo. "Use our skills."
Kamo nodded slowly, and turned back to his holographic desk. "If my theory is correct," he said, his voice raised slightly, "then some of the Stones may have returned to Terra. Asgard and Xandar have been destroyed; their barricade around Terra's star system has fallen. It would behoove you to send troops there to recover any Stones that are there."
Kamo turned away from his desk and gave En a meaningful look, both eyebrows raised. En nodded and slunk away.
Well. That was an interesting development. Neither of them were here willingly; and it looked like neither of them were happy to be here, either. A silent rebellion, then. It would be good to have Kamo in his corner. Kamo, of all the Elders, understood that this was not a question of right or wrong; it was not rebelling against evil to fight for good. Hell, none of the Elders had done a good thing in their entire life, not even the Nameless One. Her definition of justice was… twisted. Too straightforward. No leeway.
It was just practicality. Survival. Either they followed Thanos to their deaths, as he tore the universe down to its foundations - or they stopped him before this truly began, and got to live another billion years. Free.
En grimaced. Damn. He was starting to sound like a revolutionary - "better to live on your feet than to die on your knees," blah fucking blah. But still. He liked to believe that he had at least a modicum of self-respect in him, that hadn't been worn away by the orgies and drinking and life on Sakaar. A life under the thumb of a would-be tyrant was no way to live, not while there were better things he could be doing. Obediently following a being two million times younger than him was just insulting.
The doors to his quarters - sparse and bare, by his standards, but still more lavish than what the other Elders had - hissed open. En stepped through and let it slam shut behind him. He made for his desk, with the lists and lists of allies and enemies, and stared at them for a while. "Hmm," he said aloud. "Hmm. This could work."
This could work. It had to work. And if this brief summary of the galaxy's major players these days was accurate, half the work was already done for him.
En smiled to himself, a sharp smile full of wicked, gleaming teeth, and pulled up the holograms again. He had a couple of calls to make.
The television cast a blue, flickering pallor over the office; its light glimmered on shards of broken glass, and shone dully on cloudy spills of whiskey. The wheels of the upside-down desk chair spun feebly, like spinning tops losing momentum.
The haggard newscaster's voice was tinny and thin. "Ellis's appointment of Rhodes to the position of Secretary of State comes as a surprise to many," she was saying, "who believed that the former Air Force colonel was going to have his rank stripped. This is a surprising reversal for the Ellis administration -"
Glass crunched underfoot.
"- who gave every indication that Ross was the best choice for the administration while the Accords were in their earliest stages -"
A hand closed around a half-empty whiskey glass.
"- Rhodes has not been seen since the Dusting, but it is safe to say that he is still alive and with us. As for Ross, he has disappeared from the public eye since the announcement of Rhodes's appointment -"
The glass shattered against the wall.
Chest heaving, he watched the slow drip of watered-down whiskey trickling down the wood paneling. His fingers itched for more destruction, more broken things beneath his fingers - to rip, and tear, to kill -
The television screen fuzzed briefly with static. The voice of the newscaster warped, became reedy and masculine; it was no longer tinny, now unctuous and dripping with a drunken self-importance. "Hello? Is this - is this thing on? Hello?"
That smarmy voice was… unfamiliar. Though something about it still set his teeth on edge. "Who the hell are you?" he said gruffly.
"Oh, hi," the voice said, through the newscaster's mouth. "Hello there. How's it, uh, how's it goin'? Everything alright on Terra?"
"No," he snarled.
"Whoa, there, there's no need for that," the voice said. "Good grief, mister, I'm just trying to -"
He reached for his drawer, and the pistol in it. "I'm going to ask you this one time," he said, glaring into the newscaster's dispassionate eyes. "Who are you, and what do you want?"
The newscaster was silent for a moment. "You can call me… Andre," the voice said, through the newscaster's mouth. The voice did not fit her face at all. It was disconcerting. "Andre Grass. Nice to meet you."
Something about that name was eerily familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on why. That familiarity - that bare minimum of resemblance to something he may have known - set his teeth on edge. "That has to be the fakest name I've ever heard, you dumb son of a bitch," he said, opening the drawer.
"Does that really matter?"
"It does, because - how the hell did you get through? How do you even know about this mode of communication?"
"Oh, your boss gave me a mainline right into it," Andre said cheerfully. "Nifty little piece of tech you folks have there. Not bulletproof, though."
His hand froze above the gun.
"Tut, tut, naughty, naughty." The voice turned serious, and the sudden shift made him vaguely nauseous. "I am… shall we say, representing a greater interest. A higher power."
"Color me unimpressed."
"Color him purple." He felt the blood rush out of his face. "That change your mind at all?"
For fuck's sake, of course it did. That changed fucking everything. "Oh," he said, sliding the drawer shut. He waved a finger at the screen, even if he was sure that Andre couldn't see him. "Oh, no, no, no, mister, if you're saying what I think you're saying, then -"
"It's not what you think."
"Then what -"
"This is… under the radar." Andre sounded a bit smug, now. "Your boss told me you've got a bit of a home field advantage, for lack of a better term. Well, you've still got a bit of clout, I hope, because I have orders for you. You, uh… you know anything about the Infinity Stones?"
"A fair bit," he said grumpily.
"Good. I need you to find them."
He sniffed haughtily and sat at the edge of his desk, glaring at the newscaster on the screen. "Now, listen," he said, ignoring how the smarminess of Andre's voice appeared to be seeping into the newscaster's face, "hasn't your big purple testicle of a boss already collected them all? Hasn't he done his job?"
"...Yeah, well, there's been a slight complication. He's looking at bigger and better things, he says."
"Uh huh."
"Universe-killing things."
"...I see."
"And that's not good."
"Then why the hell are you working for him?"
The newscaster sniffed. "It's complicated, and not worth my time," Andre's voice said. "Anyway - you're in charge of things, I assume?"
He gritted his teeth. "Sure," he said. Not as much as he would like to be, but he still had some power. He still had something to contribute, he was still worth something -
"Yeah, good. Excellent. So get some of your people together, and see if you can hunt down any traces of the Stones. Bring 'em to me when you're done with them. And hey, when Thanos is done with them, you folks can keep them for yourselves."
The newscaster smiled - a wide, shark-toothed smile, cold and dispassionate and so utterly wrong on her face that it made him shudder. "We're on a deadline," Andre's voice said. "I'll give you a month. I'm fairly confident that you will be able to hunt them down, if you have the right resources."
"A month," he repeated, softly. Stunned. A month. Was he insane? "Are you serious? What, you're just going to drop this on me without a briefing or anything?"
The smile faded a bit. "Hey, I'm just as in the dark as you are," Andre said defensively.
"Oh, how fucking reassuring -"
"Watch your tone, I can vaporize this planet with a snap of my fingers," he snapped. "Finger's on the button, mister."
He narrowed his eyes and leaned back.
Andre giggled suddenly, a high-pitched noise that was like a railroad spike driving into his spine, and said, "Well, y'know, I - I've heard a couple things from the horse's mouth. Apparently Terrans have some kind of, uh… a, uh, wizard defense squad. Or something. They put up a bit of a fight when Thanos's old guard came to bother you guys."
"Yeah, we know about them," he muttered. " 'Masters of the Mystic Arts.' We haven't been able to get anything done here because they're so… meddlesome. I know exactly who they are."
"Oh, good. So, guess what! They had the Time Stone this whole time."
Something popped in his jaw.
"So if there's any place you should go sniffing, it's around their little outposts. Hell, if what I've heard is right, you've got one just up from the coast from you, mister. Have at thee."
The slasher smile widened on the newscaster's face. "You can do it," Andre said. "I believe in you. Just - I'm on a deadline, buddy, and even I don't know when it'll come due. Take every day like it's your last. Go, go, chop-chop. And, uh, you know how to reach me. I use the same setup as your boss. Alrighty, have fun!"
There was a faint whine of static, and the newscaster's face was suddenly normal again. His eyes lingered on her for nearly a minute longer, almost expecting to see that same shark-toothed grin, those intelligent beady eyes - like a mask pressing through cloth, vague imprints of something sinister projected between worlds. And God, that fucking voice. This Andre - obviously not his real name, but what the hell - was like an over-caffeinated bipolar twelve-year-old: couldn't make up his damn mind whether to be giggly or murderous or both… Good grief. How that douchebag was Thanos's new second in command, he would never know.
He took a deep breath and pressed a button on the phone on his desk. "Roll call," he said into it, his voice terse and heavy in his throat. "Names and numbers, send them in. We've got a new mission, and I need everybody I can spare in the States on it." A light blinked once, and he let go of the button.
The Skrull wearing Thaddeus Ross's face took a deep breath and sat on the edge of his desk, hands in his pockets, watching the headlines scroll across the screen once more.
Author's note:
I LIVE! Holy fucking hell, sorry for the long wait and the short ass chapter. College is a pain in the fucking ass, y'all. I've had this outlined for the longest time, and I haven't had any time to actually type it out. But hey, yay worldbuilding! Yay plot! The Skrulls are getting involved - like, really involved - and I have an interesting plan for them and one of their very unwilling allies down the line. Hopefully, I can get this moving along.
I have a couple of fancasts for the Elders, by the way. Seginn - Astronomer, asshole, et cetera - is Christopher Lee. (That does not make him Saruman. Just saying. There's still a Saruman role to be filled.) Kamo is Peter Capaldi, and the Judicator, who we haven't really seen much of for a while, is Gwendoline Christie.
I will, however, be changing my update schedule from "weekly" to "whenever the fuck I have time," which will probably be once every two months. If any of you get impatient, feel free to heckle me at my tumblr, or if you want to see what else I've been working on.
So! Tell me what you think. What would you want to see happen in the next chapter - more plot, more analysis of the ring, more character interaction, more angst and shit? Hit me up with suggestions; I'd love to hear from you, and know that I'm not just yeeting this out into the abyss for no reason. Leave a comment on the way out. Adios, friends.
